The Time of Apollo – 1975 NASA Film

In 1975, the Apollo program ended. Spanning nearly 15 years, from the programs inception in 1961, the final moon landings in 1972, all the way to Apollo Soyuz in 1975, the Apollo program was, at current, the ultimate in exploration, setting distance records, mission duration records (for that time) on Skylab, and of course, it’s primary goal of landing a human on the moon, a goal accomplished in 1969.

Apollo was something else – something magical to those who experienced it, and to those, like me, who were born after it’s time.

Time. History is just the record of time, and in this film, we take a look at the Time of Apollo; snapshots of events that were only a few years before this film was made. The film has a tone almost as if it was made today, yet it’s so strange to think it was just after Apollo-Soyuz had lifted off in July of 1975.

This film is one of the best recaps of Apollo I have ever seen, for how it does portray the story. The music is top notch and the sites shown, Launch Complex 34, 39A, the firing room at KSC and the like, are all rare views in the very early post Apollo era.

LC-39A shows the beginnings of the construction of the launch structures for the Space Shuttle program. LC-34 still has a “clean” look to it, even including the emergency numbers sign, since LC-34 had only recently been stripped of it’s service structures and major equipment.

LC-39B still has the mobile service structure for the Saturn 1B and Saturn V vehicles parked, as if waiting for a Saturn flight that will never come. Eventually it, and the massive Launch Umbilical Towers, would be taken apart and later properly demolished in the 80’s and 90’s, long after Apollo had faded into memory.

That’s enough random thought here though. Enjoy the film. If this doesn’t give you a feeling of what Apollo means to those of us who love space history, then I don’t know what will.